Reflections from the intersections of media, culture and faith

Not imagination as a flight of fancy (although that can be good), but imagination that carries Christians into the hard places where reconciliation and transformation are most needed.

“Imagination gets us in touch with what is most real,” says Kerry Dearborn, a professor in the School of Theology at Seattle Pacific University. However, Dearborn adds, imagination is a “tool we haven’t allowed God to access.”

During a recent presentation Dearborn joined with Chris Hoke, who serves with Tierra Nueva Ministries in Skagit County, to explore the meaning of imagination in Christian life. Both have just published books that explore Christian imagination: Dearborn’s “Drinking from the Wells of a New Creation” and Hoke’s “Wanted,” a reflection on his work within prisons and among immigrants.

Hoke (who appears above in a CBN profile about a man cared for by Tierra Nueva) pointed toward the imagination as he read from his book:

Growing up in many churches, I never found them to be raw or extremely honest places — not places where you could show the worst side of yourself. But I found the jail to be a place where inmates didn’t have the option to hide their problems … Here, people are left staring — innocent or guilty of the specific charges — at the wreck of their lives. And in this place, in these rooms of unadorned life, I found something that clergy call sacrament, mysteries I could feel.

In light of Hoke’s experience, perhaps it is no surprise that in researching her book Dearborn found the most striking examples of imagination and grace among the marginalized, who are open to the Holy Spirit in a way that cannot be matched by those of us who are more affluent, more respectable — and who feel like we have more to lose.

Imagination, Dearborn says, can work like a solvent that washes away old, false truths and renews one’s faith — and one’s ability to see the “other” in fresh new ways. But Christians in Western culture too often fail to use this gift.

“In a very cerebral culture we demean imagination,” Dearborn says. But that is to our loss.

At a time when the culture wars promote false choices, when churches are too often complicit in the injustices of this world, and when congregations crumble because they can’t adapt to a changing culture, the need for a renewed imagination shines brighter than ever.

And the words of Dearborn and Hoke feel much more daring than they ought to be.

This spring, three times a week I have walked through the lobby of Otto Miller Hall, going to and from my course in Communication Ethics — usually consumed in thought about class and oblivious to the presence of those students who serve as safety monitors.

And today my emotions are this peculiar mix of sorrow and relief — sorrow for the loss of life, sorrow for those injured, sorrow for the way violence has displayed its relentless force here at SPU. But I also feel relief because of the quick action of a student monitor and others, who stopped a terrible situation from becoming much, much worse. And as I look back at these past two sentences, I am acutely aware of how inadequate any words are right now.

For that reason, the most powerful moment in Thursday night’s prayer service started with notes of music. During a period of silent prayer, musicians began playing Gungor’s song “Beautiful Things.” As the musicians began the chorus, without any cue or direction, students began to sing. Their voices were soft, starting like a murmur and gaining strength as more joined in. Once the prayer ended, the lyrics appeared on the screen and the mix of music and voice swelled into a crescendo that was at once mournful and gorgeous.

“Beautiful Things” was a good choice because it sways back and forth between lament and hope. Earlier in the service, my colleague Frank Spina touched on the importance of lament — that we cannot skip or bypass it; we must reckon with it, express it. To do otherwise, to rush forward to the usual words of hope, he said, is to reduce that hope to a cliché.

Before the hope of Psalm 23, he reminded us, is Psalm 22, an expression of desolate lament. After Spina finished his comments, we listened to both of those Psalms and heard them in a way that was not possible before.

In my ethics course, I devote the final weeks to examining the concept of reconciliation. I use the book “Reconciling All Things,” which also stresses the importance of lament: It is a crying out toward God, the authors say, a practice that is necessary in order to find genuine hope. And in recent weeks, the students have explored lament through various stories, ranging from those of 9/11 widows to Jesmyn Ward’s memoir “Men We Reaped” to the documentary “The Interrupters,” which examines efforts to combat gun violence in Chicago.

By using stories, it is my hope that students can see how abstract concepts are lived out in concrete, real-life situations. While these stories are intense, we still examine them at a safe distance, in a classroom.

On Thursday, that distance collapsed. Please pray that we have the courage to lament honestly, so that we may hope fully.

I’ll leave it to you to sort out the significance of that list and what it might say about all of us. But in looking over the list it struck me that too often I have thought only about what I give up and not enough about who I turn toward during Lent, which started on Ash Wednesday and is a 40-day time of spiritual preparation for Easter. On this point, we Protestants may stand to learn a great deal from our brothers and sisters in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions.

Orthodox Lent begins with the Rite of Forgiveness, in which all church members form a circle and, one at a time, stand face-to-face with each other and ask forgiveness. This experience is profoundly healing and also preventive; I’m more likely to restrain a harsh word in July if I recall that I will have to ask this person’s forgiveness again in March.

Ultimately, our sacrifices during Lent ought to turn our attention toward God, like a pang of hunger during a fast can remind us of our dependence upon God for all that is good. If we are more attentive toward God, perhaps as an extension of God’s love we can be more attentive toward one another.

As a journalist-turned-professor, I have followed a path built around words and their use. How can students learn to write with precision and clarity? How can they decipher truth from falsehood in what they read and see? How can they preserve their own humanity — and that of others — in their communication practices?

In other words: How can they be real, authentic and sincere in life amid a media-generated blizzard of clever words? The same question, of course, applies to each of us every time we log on to Facebook, place a phone call, send a text, or a speak in person with someone.

“The Enemy of Clear Language”

George Orwell understood this challenge all too well, as noted in his 1946 essay on writing, “Politics and the English Language”:

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.

More than 65 years have passed since Orwell penned those words. Not much has changed, except for the new ways in which we can channel our insincerity. But here is the more important question: If we wish to live differently as Christians, what kind of practices might we adopt so that our words don’t just ring true — but are true?

Words and Their Care

This brings me back to a book I quoted in an earlier post, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre’s “Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies.” Much like Orwell, she is troubled by how people use words to obscure rather than illuminate. One response, she argues, resides in the practice of precision:

Truth-telling is difficult because the varieties of untruth are so many and so well disguised. Lies are hard to identify when they come in the form of apparently innocuous imprecision, socially acceptable slippage, hyperbole masquerading as enthusiasm, or well-placed propaganda. … So let us reflect here on the practice of precision as a spiritual discipline that lies at the heart of truth-telling.

For McEntyre, a practice of precision embodies several traits.

First, “precision begins with defining terms.” This isn’t a matter of using the dictionary. It means we think carefully about the words we choose and how others use them as well. More important, if we wish to speak or write with precision we must have the humility to listen to others first. In other words, we treat others as we wish to be treated ourselves.

Second, “precision requires attention to process.” That is, precise communication helps ourselves and others understand how the world works. It does not obscure the uncomfortable truths, either in pubic debate, personal relationships or church life. McEntyre calls this kind of precision “strenuous and highly morally relevant.” Our credibility, as individuals and as a church, depends on it.

Third, “precision lies in understatement.” We live in an age of continual hype, and we can resort to it to promote ourselves and our faith. But when we refrain from hype we become more honest about our lives and more open to God’s true love for us. Hype is a desperate effort to impress and control, to prove that we deserve attention. Understatement, in contrast, shows respect for others and humility before God.

Responsibility and Compassion

McEntyre concludes:

Precision is … not only a form of responsibility and a kind of pleasure, but an instrument of compassion. To be precise requires care, time, and attention to the person, place, or process being described.

This is a key point: Precision unleavened by compassion turns even the best-intentioned words into heavy clubs. If we are to be real and authentic with one another, then we speak and write with others in mind, not just ourselves. To practice precision is to be both clear and open. Let us pray that God may help us to be both.

Years ago, during a sermon about money, a preacher offered this observation (which I paraphrase):

People say that money is neutral; what matters is what you do with it. But money isn’t neutral — it’s powerful. If you have it, you have choices that other people don’t have, and those choices will tug and pull at you. We should not kid ourselves about that.

That message has stayed with me through the years, and it returns every time I think of the financial collapse of 2008. In his book “The Big Short,” Michael Lewis argues that the prospects of huge, immediate profits overwhelmed all caution in the financial sector. In essence, Lewis says, people acted in a manner contrary not only to their own long-term interests, but to the interests of their clients and society. It became a sort of collective delusion, fueled by the prospects of extraordinary profits.

However, Lewis’ argument is generous when compared to that of Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job (see trailer), which won the 2011 Oscar for Best Documentary. Ferguson sees in the finance industry willful greed and malevolence, not just delusion. He explores the ways in which that pursuit of money, accompanied by a sense of entitlement, continues to taint not just Wall Street but government and (yes) university academics.

Whether you find Lewis or Ferguson more persuasive (and both are worth your time), their stories illustrate an observation from my pastor this Sunday: Money operates as an ideology from which we must be converted. When money, rather than God, becomes omnipotent in our lives, its power can distort and harm. The collapse of 2008 is but another cautionary tale of that power — a tale we still struggle to comprehend.

The consequences of 2008 persist today; they are not the abstractions of world set far from the Northwest. They continue to echo in our lives through lost jobs, foreclosed homes, and derailed hopes and dreams — even among those still fortunate enough to have homes and savings. It makes me wonder: Will my children have the same opportunities that my wife and I have enjoyed? I’m no longer sure about that.

But there’s a bigger question: Beyond those earthly worries, how can my wife and I steel our children against the pull of money and its pernicious ideology? How can we model for them a lives that are truly free? In a society rocked by financial uncertainty, perhaps one place we can begin is to put aside fear and trust in a God who will never abandon us. As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

During his sermon on Sunday, my pastor asked: Are we consumed with consuming? If our major corporations have their way, the answer would always be yes.

In a new book, recently excerpted in the New York Times Magazine, reporter Charles Duhigg catalogs the extraordinary lengths that retailers like Target (see video) work not only to build, but to control, our habits of consumption — and to make our consumption habitual. As one researcher from Target told Duhigg:

Just wait. We’ll be sending you coupons for things you want before you even know you want them.

The scope of modern marketing, fueled by research in neurology and psychology, is far different from the advertising of the past. It allows us to hold on to the illusion that we can resist even as we are directed, and even manipulated, to buy and buy again.

So it is no small thing when my pastor asked us to consider changing our shopping and consumption habits. We are working not just against our own tendencies; we are working against a relentless culture of marketing that aims with precision at our tendencies and vulnerabilities. That’s why it can feel so difficult to change.

Yet, by God’s grace, we are not helpless. This is why we can think of frugality as more than just a virtuous trait. It is a spiritual discipline, an act — no, a habit — of resistance against one of the powers and principalities of our day.

Many years ago, I accompanied my wife to a spiritual retreat at the Dominican Reflection Center in Woodway. It was a day to take a break from the busyness of life, to be still, to listen for God.

My wife loved it. I could not wait for it to end.

Thinking back, I realize it wasn’t the solitude that got to me. Nor was it the physical stillness. It was the silence. It was deafening, overwhelming, even intimidating. And, to be honest, I don’t think I am that different today. Why?

Part of the answer resides in my tendencies as a media junkie — then as a newspaper editor, now as someone who teaches college students about media. But that answer alone does not seem sufficient.

When I reflect on the pace of life, it is not just that things are too frantic (though that is problem enough). Our hectic lives are also loud. There is already clatter aplenty as we navigate our daily chores. Then we add to it our own soundtrack — via Ipods, radios, smart phones, computers and TV.

To a degree, that soundtrack helps us navigate the day. It can provide small moments of delight and comfort. It also can insulate and isolate. When I put on my Ipod ear buds, I am shutting out other sounds that compete for my attention.

It is said that nature abhors a vacuum; silence can feel like an emotional vacuum, something to be avoided. I get so used to having a soundtrack that when it disappears it feels like a void. All those years ago, at that spiritual retreat, it was that void that left me so eager to end the day.

In silence, we can to allow God a space to enter our thoughts, our hearts. That ought to be comforting, but it also can be frightening. Perhaps we are afraid that in silence, with distraction stripped away, we will hear only the sounds of brokenness in our lives.

But perhaps, if we listen just a bit harder, we might just hear the still-small voice of God’s grace telling us to put our fears aside.